by Dale Chappell
The family of one of the prisoners who died of COVID-19 at San Quentin prison in California has filed the first wrongful death claim — a precursor to a lawsuit — against the prison. Papers filed by the family’s lawyers on September 10, 2020, detailed how prison officials ignored the risks of the coronavirus and transferred 121 prisoners to San Quentin from a known COVID-19 hotspot without testing them — and then housed those prisoners in an open dorm with San Quentin prisoners without any precautions.
In short order, more than 2,237 prisoners became infected and 26 died (one guard also died). The transferred prisoners came from the California Institution for Men in Chino, where more than 600 cases of COVID-19 were reported with at least nine deaths.
Known for being the home of California’s death row, San Quentin also houses large numbers of low-level, non-violent prisoners, with many being older and at-risk for COVID-19. One of those prisoners was Daniel Ruiz who, at age 61, had at least four identified medical problems that put him at risk for death of COVID-19, according to the papers filed. He was one of 40,000 prisoners identified across the state ...
by Dale Chappell
A study by a group of criminologists and sociologists published in August 2020 found that an entire generation during the “tough on crime” era of the 1980s and early 1990s spent more time in prison serving longer sentences than any other generation before or after. Many are still serving time under those harsh sentences.
The collaboration of experts from the State University of New York at Albany and the University of Pennsylvania analyzed data from 1.6 million prisoners, focusing mainly on North Carolina during 1972 to 2016, as it was representative of the idea of longer prisons sentences in an attempt to curb crime across the country.
The highly detailed study found that the crime rates for rape, aggravated assault, burglary, and other violent crimes were higher in the 1970s than in the 1990s. Yet, those adults who came of age during the 1990s had higher rates of arrest and incarceration than their counterparts just 20 years earlier.
Titled “Locking Up My Generation,” the study’s authors identified a “cohort effect” that filled the nation's prisons in record time, which they defined as a group that shares “common historical or social experiences.” To be more specific, it’s a ...
by Dale Chappell
The push to deport as many foreign nationals as possible under the Trump administration has helped to spread the coronavirus across Latin America, thanks to increased flights from overcrowded immigration detention centers across the country under an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) program designed to speed up ...
by Dale Chappell
Kentucky State law allows county jails to charge prisoners a daily fee during their stay while fighting their case. But what happens when the person is found not guilty of the charges and gets released? According to a February 14, 2020 ruling by the Kentucky Court of ...
by Dale Chappell
The State of Rhode Island has taken the uncommon step of providing opioid-based medication to help its prisoners who battle drug addiction in prison. The bold move has not only saved lives but has also achieved something that has eluded prison officials for decades: keeping drug-addicted prisoners ...
by Dale Chappell
Over the last 50 years, the number of prisoners serving life sentences has grown to exceed the entire prison population of 1970. While efforts are being made to “reform” the reforms enacted under the “tough on crime” regime of the 1990s that flooded the prisons, little attention ...
by Dale Chappell
On March 4, 2020, federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guard Colin Akparanta pleaded guilty to the 2017 sexual abuse of a female prisoner at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, thereby also depriving the woman of her civil rights.
The 43-year-old naturalized citizen from Nigeria, ...
by Dale Chappell
Every week, more than 10,000 people leave prison and 200,000 are released from jail across the country, after being convicted. And the rules and regulations preventing them from jobs, housing, and education — often called “collateral consequences” of being convicted of a crime — can last many ...
by Dale Chappell
With nearly one in four of the state’s frontline firefighters being state prisoners during peak wildfire season, California has been scrambling to find enough qualified firefighters to staff its fire crews for the upcoming season. This is because the state has locked down its prisoners, including all ...
by Dale Chappell
In any Michigan prison right now, trading a package of ramen soup for just about anything else might be a deal nobody will make. That’s because the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus shut down a plant that produces the beloved prison staple in early June ...
